With my mother’s hairpin

in the eyes of Oedipus

everything turned black

and on the black skin now

of the couch, as I lay, I rolled

into the dark room of sleep

where faintly in its chemicals

a photograph was emerging

of my father who had died

before he, his child, could eat

having shut mother

in the kitchen to cook

with long angel hair tossed

into the pot she was stirring

while sighing over the fire

with a long sharp spoon, a hairpin

which will take his eyes out

so he can be able in the dark

dreams finally to fall asleep

  Translated by David Mason and the author